


Twin Dragons

by fojee



Category: Japanese Drama, Ouroboros (TV)
Genre: Gen, trigger warning: suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 19:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3866932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fojee/pseuds/fojee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ikuo and Tatsuya hold on to each other while the world ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twin Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers and trigger warnings for character death and suicide. Some scenes and conversations from the show have been changed.

I.

She's gone.

When they tried to take Ikuo away, Tatsuya lost it. The lady in charge of the new place pursed her lips but let them be. Her choice proved wise when the younger kid, Ryuzaki Ikuo, started screaming that night. Danno Tatsuya calmed him down before the rest of the children followed suit.

For the rest of the time that they passed from house to house, Ikuo almost forgot that they weren't brothers by blood. 

He forgot everything else, except the cold metal ouroboros against his skin was a constant reminder of their promise to avenge her. As soon as he came of age, Tacchan went to a tattoo parlor for a reminder of his own. It cut deep into his flesh. Whatever they were, blood connected them after all. 

Her blood.

II.

"Maybe I'm not cut out for this after all." Ikuo stared down at the thick textbook he needed to read before class. Being a scholarship student, his professor seemed to have it in for him in particular.

Tatsuya sighed and set aside the magazine he was flipping through. "So help me god, you will pass this class if I have to drill open your brain and shove the entire book in it."

"Will you quiz me?" Ikuo squeezed beside Tacchan on the small bed in the older boy's cramped apartment, and held the book out to him.

"Fine. But don't expect me to make you flashcards," he growled out. At this point, he knew so much about being a cop that he could very easily impersonate one. Hmmm. It could be useful someday.

Ikuo beamed. 

III.

What Ikuo didn't know...

Tatsuya Danno pulled off the con flawlessly, patting the confused victim in the back and walking away, but he let himself be seen by her. Her henchmen had been keeping tabs on him for a while, but this was the first time she came out herself. She was a beautiful woman, though her eyes belied her age. 

He knew that she knew that he knows he's being watched. 

Only Ikuo remained ignorant of how exactly Tatsuya had been supplementing his scholarship money. 

He'd learn soon enough. They couldn't afford to bury their heads in the sand. The clock was ticking. Every day the killer lived while Yuiko-sensei lay in a grave was another day they'd make him pay back. 

He hid his shaking hands and put on a good show for the yakuza.

IV. 

Hibino Mizuki neither of them saw coming.

Tatsuya watched the two of them from afar, worrying. She was a little bit like Yuiko-sensei though Ikuo might not realize that that was why he was drawn to her. She didn't smile much, but she worked hard for the sake of the people involved. Not glory. Not pride. Not even for her father's acknowledgement. There was a certain gentleness in her mixed with the steel core of her ideals.

He watched as Ikuo falls for her. And worried.

At one point, he stopped worrying and started hoping instead. 

The closer they got to the answers they've been looking for, the heavier the burden became on Ikuo. A part of Tatsuya couldn't help but test him continuously, to see if he'd choose to stay on this path. A part of him wanted Ikuo to fail.

When he found Yuiko-sensei's tape, he found his answers. And finally understood.

He had badgered Ikuo over and over as kids about that night. He had learned to leave him alone about it, but only after the younger boy started getting migraines, and his nightmares turned to night terrors. 

Tatsuya finally understood why Ikuo couldn't remember. A part of him wished he could forget as well.

V.

Father.

Ikuo had never had one, had never really wanted one.

He had spent most of his life with just Tacchan as family. There was a Yuiko-sensei shaped hole between them, but her loss bound them closer somehow. To find out now who he really was felt like standing in the center of an earthquake. 

When he had started as a cop, he discovered how much he liked the work. Even the stupid parts, like having to question a million witnesses, or having to dig through the archives, or having to write paperwork at the end of a case. 

He was good at it, too. Sure, Tatsuya's 'unofficial help' had led him to several high-profile arrests, but he kept track of the ones he had made on his own, and they were of a respectable number. He had the instincts for it, he thought. And it felt like practice for what they were trying to do for Yukio-sensei. 

He knew Hibino-san would disagree, but there was a thin line between justice and revenge, and he was highly competent at one and getting ready for the other.

But now his abilities felt tainted by the knowledge that he had received them from his father.

He was in so much pain that he didn't know how he made it home. Just that Hibino-san was beside him. That day she came back to his place and talked about moving in together, and he stumbled out of bed and grabbed at her, leaning his head against her back.

She was so strong, just as he was feeling at his weakest. She was so beautiful, and her shining light hurt his eyes. She loved him, and maybe he loved her too.

But everything felt... Wrong. 

VI.

They were the abandoned ones. Tatsuya knew that very well. When he finally realized what kind of place Mahoroba had been, he had gotten sick at the mere idea. Even living as a yakuza all this time, he had never realized how sick society was, that the rich and the strong lived off of the weak like vultures. Like cannibals. 

It was easy to get into Kitagawa's house. He had merely followed the son, grabbing him just as he opened the door. He didn't get any satisfaction from scaring him and his mother. He had learned about Ikuo's past. What quirk of fate had it been that Ikuo wasn't standing in front of him, condemned by the choices of his father. 

He didn't know at what point he decided that Ikuo had enough. Maybe it was just that he had been preparing for this day somehow. Not just the day that he would get his revenge, but also the day that Ikuo would leave his side. 

Everyone left. 

And then Chono was there, persistent bastard that he was, and then Ikuo was there, and Tatsuya's heart leapt at the sight. Ikuo holding two guns at his colleague and at his father.

It was... a choice you couldn't take back, a choice that he knew Ikuo had made knowing full well its consequences. There were no angels and demons here tonight. Just twin dragons holding on to each other while the world ended.

He wanted to push him away, but he settled for clasping his arm wordlessly after he had pistol-whipped the other detective. Ikuo met his gaze. No uncertainties, just questions that required the truth.

And Commissioner Kitagawa obliged them. 

VII.

It was the lack of guilt that really bothered Ikuo. How that man talked about what he had done as if it were nothing. He had thrown Ikuo away like he was trash, had ordered Yuiko-sensei to kill him, had shot her so matter-of-factly and left her to die, and had sent his men to shut them up. He had the blood of children on his hands, and he excused it all because they were the ones nobody had wanted, the ones nobody had loved. 

Ikuo listened and remembered as if in a daze. 

Who was this man, really? Was he a monster, made one when his own family died? He knew how it felt to have everything taken from him. But he remained stone cold, practically taunting them to kill him. 

Ikuo had a perverse desire to crack that façade, and he knew Tacchan felt the same.

When Kitagawa's son burst into the room, and Tacchan got shot, Ikuo saw that stone crack. He would have shattered it to pieces, would have killed the boy, maybe even his mother, just to watch that perfect calm break. 

But Tacchan stopped him. "I can't face Yuiko-sensei," he said, smirk in place, as if he weren't bleeding out right now. Ikuo knew what Tacchan was saying. _Don't turn into him. It's enough, Ikuo. It's enough._

VIII.

Dying had never been in the plan, but Tatsuya had never been afraid of it. It was how he had made his reputation as a yakuza. A part of him was afraid, of course. He had finished all his business, had instructed Fukamachi to handle the rest. He had gotten to the truth, had gotten to know Yuiko-sensei even deeper, had gotten to see her and listen to her words for him. He was _almost_ happy.

But there was one loose thread. Ryuzaki Ikuo. He ignored the noises outside the window, ignored the pain that was spreading to his entire side. They were talking, talking, talking, and he could not remember a single word about what they talked about. All he knew were the words he couldn't say, the words he had never been able to say. 

Ikuo never needed to hear them. 

IX.

Ikuo didn't remember how many times he's crawled into Tacchan's arms as a kid. After nightmares, or whenever he got bullied at school, or just because. They didn't talk about it. And thinking of it now sent a pang of embarrassment through him. But maybe the reason he felt a little different about Yuiko-sensei now was that _he_ had Tacchan to look out for him, but Tacchan didn't have anybody. 

When he got promoted as detective, he promised himself to do so well that Tacchan would stop seeing him as a burden, and start seeing him as a partner, an equal.

But even to the end, Tacchan always tried to protect him. 

And maybe he was doing this because the revenge was over, and maybe he was doing this to meet Yuiko-sensei again, but those were small reasons. As always, he followed Danno Tatsuya's lead. He followed his best friend and brother, his partner and family. 

Tacchan felt light in his arms. Around him, Mahoroba echoed with ghosts but he ignored them. He laid the other man gently against a wall, squeezed in beside him, and pulled out his gun.

It was the easiest choice he ever had to make.

X.

"You selfish bastard," Hibino Mizuki whispered, her words drowned out by the sound of the waves. She was wearing the ouroboros around her neck. She was alone now, and there was a bleak emptiness inside her that scared her sometimes. 

But the waves returned again and again, covering everything left behind on the shore. And though she felt broken, Mizuki knew her own strength.

She would be returning to work as a detective, with Chono-san as her new partner. Her path was in front of her, and she would walk it with her head high. She wore the ouroboros to remind herself of the price that people had paid for the truth. 

She had found her reason.

XI.

She didn't know why she chose that particular design at the jewelry store. The symmetry of the two dragons appealed to her sense of duty, perhaps. Kashiwaba Yuiko wore it everywhere before she even thought to look up the symbol. Ouroboros. Eternity and infinity. Death and resurrection. Creation and destruction.

The Ouroboros Project was aptly named. She almost threw the pendant away in disgust after she found out, but she kept it and wore it everyday as if to shout to the world the name she couldn't speak out loud. She wore it like a talisman. 

When she had met Ikuo and Tatsuya, she mentally called them her twin dragons. They fought each other and defended each other with equal fierceness. Maybe it was terrible to pick favorites, but they were easy to love, separately and together. Oh, but they were an unholy terror together. 

She loved them and they accepted her. Without knowing her, they accepted her. They were so hungry for what she could give them. 

She knew this idyll had an end. When she had gathered enough evidence, she had the numbers to the data's location etched on the pendant, and it felt a little heavier around her neck. 

She handed it to Ikuo that night, wishing she had more time, feeling his pain and confusion like the pain of her throbbing wound. Tacchan would feel even worse, she knew. She was crying, afraid to leave them behind, all of her charges, to a cruel world who saw them as mere nothings.

"Take care of Tacchan," she whispered. "My twin dragons. Be strong, and take care of each other."

XII.

After Ikuo pulled the trigger, there was no darkness. Just the two people he loved the most smiling at him, welcoming him home. 

Just light and light and light.

**Author's Note:**

> I made a playlist for Ouroboros. It can be found here: http://8tracks.com/oofstudio/can-t-choose-you


End file.
